Nation

CHAPTER 12 Cannon and Politics

MAU SAT DOWN ON a god stone.

“Where is Cox now, do you think?”

“I hope to goodness the wave drowned him!” said Daphne. “I know I shouldn’t, but I do.”

“And you fear that it did not,” said Mau. It wasn’t a question.

“That’s true. I think it would take more than a wave. Hah, Foxlip said he killed Cox. That was just because he wanted to look big, I’m sure. But Polegrave said something about Cox having cannibal chums. Could that happen?”

“I don’t know. The Raiders kill for glory and skulls. You say he kills for no reason. He kills things because they are alive. He sounds like a bad dream, a monster. They will not know what to make of him.”

“Soup?” Daphne suggested.

“I doubt it,” said Mau. “A cannibal has to be careful who he eats. Milo would make them strong, Pilu would give them a magic voice, and I would give them… indigestion. Who would want to eat a madman?”

Daphne shuddered. “Just so long as they don’t eat me!”

“No, they would never eat a woman,” said Mau.

“That’s very gentlemanly of them!”

“They would feed you to their wives, so that they become beautiful.”

There was one of those pauses that are icy-cold and red-hot at the same time. It was stuffed with soundless words, words that should not be said, or said another time, or in a different way, or could be said or needed to be said but couldn’t be said, and they would go on tumbling through the pause forever, or until one of them fell out —

“Ahem,” said Daphne, and all the other words escaped forever. Much later, and many times, she wondered about what might have happened if she hadn’t chosen a word that clearly belonged to her grandmother. And that was that. For some people, there is only one right moment for the right word. This is sad, but there seems to be nothing that can be done about it. “Well, I don’t see him being eaten by anybody, or even left on the side of the plate,” she went on quickly, to drown out the last echoes of “Ahem” in her head. “I’m sure the captain was right when he said Cox will take over any vessel that finds him, like an disease. It’s amazing what you can do if you don’t care who you kill. And he will kill. Those two were sent as scouts, I’m sure of it. And that means he’s found a bigger boat.”

“The boat they came in is still here, but a canoe was stolen last night,” said Mau. “I think we are not good at understanding this sort of thing.”

“I don’t think it will make any difference.”

“That’s true. The Raiders are following — hunting the survivors. They will get here sooner or later. But I want to — ”

“Er… ”

It was a small boy. Daphne could not remember his name but he was hopping up and down like someone who does not want to intrude but needs to, well, intrude.

“Yes, Hoti?” said Mau.

“Er… please, they say they are running out of thorns to fence the big field,” said the child nervously.

“Run and tell them there is a big stand to the west of the Grandfathers’ cave.” As the boy ran off, Mau shouted after him, “Tell them I said to cut the lengths much longer! It’s a waste to cut them short!”

“You must defend your island,” said Daphne.

He reacted as if he’d been struck. “Do you think I won’t, ghost girl? Do you think that?”

“It’s not just your people! You must defend your gods!”

“What? How can you say this to me?”

“Not the metaphysical… the ones with the god stones and the sacrifices and all the rest of it! I mean the statues and all the other things in the cave!”

“Those? Just more stones. Worthless… stuff.”

“No! No, they aren’t worthless. They tell you who you are!” She sagged a little. Things had been quite busy lately, and “ghost girl” said so sharply had hurt. It did. Of course, they all called her ghost girl, even Mau sometimes, and it had never worried her. But this time it told her to go away, trouserman girl, you are not one of us.

She pulled herself together. “You didn’t look. You didn’t see what I saw in the cave! You remember Air, Fire, and Water all with their globes? And the headless statue?”

“I’m sorry,” said Mau, putting his head in his hands.

“Pardon?”

“I’ve upset you. I know when you’re upset. Your face goes shiny, and then you try to act as if nothing has happened. I’m sorry I shouted. It’s all been… well, you know.”

“Yes. I know.”

They sat in the silence you get when thoughts are too tangled to become words. Then Daphne coughed.

“Anyway, you saw the broken one? And that arm sticking out of the water?”

“Yes. I saw everything,” said Mau, but he was watching a woman hurrying toward them.

“No! You didn’t! The air was getting too foul! The broken statue had been holding something. I found it while you were arguing with Ataba. It was the world. The world turned upside down. Come and see.” She took his hand in hers and pulled him toward the path up the mountain. “Everyone must see! It’s very — ”

“Yes, Cara?” said Mau to the woman, who was now hovering where she was sure to be noticed.

“I’m to tell you the river’s gone all cloudy,” the woman said, with a nervous look at Daphne.

“A pig’s got into the east meadows and is wallowing in the spring,” said Mau, standing up. “I will go and — ”

“You are going to come with me!” shouted Daphne. The woman backed away quickly as Daphne turned and went on, “Get a stick and walk up to the valley until you find a pig in the water and prod the pig! It’s not hard! Mau, you are the chief. What I want to show you is not about pigs! It’s important….”

“Pigs are impor — ”

“This is more important than pigs! I want you to come and see!”

By the end of the day everyone saw, if only for a few minutes. People moving up and down the long cave were shifting the air around, and it was nothing like as foul as it had been, but the lamps were used a lot. Every single lamp from the Judy had been pressed into service.

“The world,” said Mau, staring. “It’s a ball? But we don’t fall off?”

The ghost girl seemed to be on fire with words. “Yes, yes, and you know this! You know the story about the brother who sailed so far he came back home?”

“Of course. Every child knows it.”

“I think people from this island sailed around the world, a long, long time ago. You remembered, but over the years it became a story for little children.”

Even down in the dark, Mau thought. He ran a hand over what Daphne called “the globe,” the biggest one, which had rolled onto the floor when the statue had broken. Imo’s globe. The World. He let his fingertips just brush the stone. It came up to his chin.

So this is the world, he thought, his fingers following a line of gleaming gold across the stone. There were a lot of these lines, and they all led to the same place — or, rather, away from it, as though some giant had thrown spears around the world. And he was my ancestor, Mau told himself as he lightly touched the familiar symbol that told him this was no place built by trousermen. His people carved the stone. His people carved the gods.

In his memory he could hear the spirit of Ataba, roaring, “That doesn’t mean a thing, demon boy! The gods themselves guided their tools.” And Mau thought, Well, it means something to me. Yes, it means a lot.

“Your land was a big place, as big as Crete, I think,” said the ghost girl behind him. “I’ll show you Crete on the map later. Your people went everywhere! Mostly Africa and China and the middle Americas, and you know what? I think Jon Croll’s theory about the ice sheets is right! I went to his lecture at the Royal Society. That’s why so much of Europe and North America is just not there — er, not because he gave his lecture, I mean, but because it was covered in ice! Do you know what ice is? Oh. Well, it’s when water goes very cold until it becomes like crystal. Anyway, the other end of the world was a snowball, but down here it was still warm, and you did amazing things!”

“Ice,” murmured Mau. He felt as if he was on an unfamiliar sea, with no map and no familiar smells, while her voice washed over him. The globe was a kind of map, like the Judy’s charts. Where his island was now, where all the islands in the chain had been, it showed a mighty land, made of gold. People from here had sailed everywhere. And then… something had happened. The gods got angry, as Ataba had said, or as the ghost girl said, the crystal world of the trousermen melted. It meant the same thing. The sea rose.

If he closed his eyes, he could see the white buildings under the sea. Had it come in a rush, that great wave? Did the land shake and the mountains catch fire? It must have been sudden, because the water rose and the land became a pattern of islands, and the world changed.

“When the world was otherwise,” he whispered.

He sat down on the edge of what everyone was calling the god pool. His mind was too full of thoughts; he needed a bigger head. The… ancestors had brought the milk stone here and used it to make steps and wall carvings and gods, perhaps all out of the same piece of stone. And there was the broken statue of Imo. His head was probably in the depths of the pool. Imo had fallen, and so had the world.

Something had been returned. The Nation had been old, older than the reef, she was saying. The people of the Nation had sailed beyond the seas they knew, under unfamiliar stars.

He looked up and saw unfamiliar stars. The light shifted as groups of people moved around the hall. The roof glittered, just like statues. They were made of glass, she’d said. They looked like stars in the night sky, but they were not his stars. They were crystal stars, stars of a different sky.

“I want the right people to see this,” said Daphne behind him.

“The right people are seeing it,” said Mau.

After a few moments’ silence he heard the girl say, “I’m sorry. I meant that there are learned men in the Royal Society who could tell us what it means.”

“Are they priests?” asked Mau suspiciously.

“No. Very much no! In fact some of them don’t get on with priests at all. But they search for answers.”

“Good. Send them here. But I know what this place means. My ancestors wanted to tell us that they were here — that’s what it means,” said Mau. He could feel the tears welling up, but what was propelling them was a fierce, burning pride. “Send your wise trousermen,” he said, trying not to let his voice shake, “and we will welcome the brothers who traveled to the other end of the world, and came back at last to the place they had left behind. I am not stupid, ghost girl. If we sailed to those places long ago, wouldn’t we have settled there? And when your learned men come here, we will say to them: The world is a globe — the farther you sail, the closer to home you are.”

He could barely see Daphne in the gloom, but when she spoke her voice was shaking. “I will tell you something even more amazing,” she said. “All around the world people have carved stones into gods. All around the world. And all around the world people have said that the planets are gods, as well. But your ancestors knew things that nobody else knew. Mau, the god of Air has four little figures sitting on his shoulders. They are his sons, yes? They raced around their father to see which of them would court the woman who lives in the Moon? It’s in the beer song.”

“And what do you want to tell me about them?”

“We call the Air planet Jupiter. Jupiter has four moons that race around it. I’ve seen them in my telescope at home! And then there is Saturn, which you call Fire. The Papervine Woman tied his hands to his belt to stop the god from stealing her daughters, yes?”

“It’s just another god story for babies. I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true. Oh, well. In a way — I don’t know about the Papervine Woman, but the planet Saturn has rings around it, and I suppose they do look like a belt when you see them at the right angle.”

“It’s just a story.”

“No! It’s been turned into a story. The moons are real! So are the rings! Your ancestors saw them, and I wish I knew how. Then they made up these songs and mothers sing them to their children! That’s how the knowledge gets passed down, except that you didn’t know it was knowledge! See how the gods shine? There are little plates of glass all over them. Your ancestors made glass. I’ve got an idea about that, too. Mau, when my father comes and I get back home, this place will be the most famous cave in — ”

It was horrible to watch her face change. It went from a kind of desperate excitement to dark despair, in gentle slow motion. It was as though a shadow had drifted across a landscape.

He caught her before she fell, and he felt her tears on his skin. “He will come,” he said quickly. “There is so much ocean.”

“But he would know the course of the Judy, and this is a big island! He should have gotten here by now!”

“The ocean is much bigger. And there was the wave! He could be looking south, thinking the Judy capsized. He could be looking north, in case you were swept along. Oh, he will come. We must be ready.” Mau patted her on the back and looked down. The children, who had soon gotten fed up with looking at big dark things they didn’t understand, had gathered around and were watching them with interest. He tried to shoo them away.

The sobbing stopped. “What was that little boy holding?” said Daphne hoarsely.

Mau beckoned the child over and borrowed the new toy from him. Daphne stared at it and started to laugh. It was more like a panting noise, in fact, the noise made by someone too astonished to draw breath. She managed to say: “Where did he get these, please?”

“He says Uncle Pilu gave them to him. He has been diving in the god pool.”

Uncle Pilu, Daphne noted. There were lots of uncles and aunts on the island now, and not many mothers and fathers.

“Tell the little boy I will give him an arm’s length of sugarcane for them,” she said, “and he can stretch his arm as long as he likes. Is that a trade?”

“Well, he’s grinning,” said Mau. “I think just hearing the word sugarcane was enough!”

“A mountain of sugar would not have been enough.” Daphne held up her purchase. “Shall I tell you what these are? They were made by someone who did not just watch the skies and sail to new lands. He thought about small things that make life better for people. I’ve never heard of them being made of gold before, but these are definitely false teeth!”

When she was a lot older and had to deal with meetings all the time, Daphne remembered the council of war. It was probably the only one ever to have children running around in it. It was certainly the only one to have Mrs. Gurgle scuttling around in it with her new teeth. She had snatched them out of Daphne’s hand when she was demonstrating them to Cahle, and it was impossible to get anything off Mrs. Gurgle if she didn’t want you to take it. They were too big for her, and almost certainly she couldn’t eat with them, but if she opened her mouth in daylight, it was like looking at the sun.

Pilu did most of the talking, but always with one eye on Mau. He talked so fast and hard that the words formed pictures in front of her eyes, and what she saw was the Agincourt speech from Henry V, or at least what it might have been like if Shakespeare had been small and dark and worn a little loincloth instead of trousers, or tights in Shakespeare’s case. But there was a lot more in there, and Pilu had one wonderful talent for a speaker: He began with the truth and then he hammered it out until it was very thin but gleamed like Mrs. Gurgle’s new teeth at noon.

They were the oldest people! He told them their ancestors had invented canoes and sailed them under new skies, to land so far away they ended up back home! And they had seen farther than any other people! They had seen the four sons of Air race across the sky! They had seen the Papervine Woman lash her vines around the Fire god! They had built wondrous devices, back in the long ago, when the world was otherwise!

But now bad men were coming! They were very bad men indeed! So Imo himself had sent them the Sweet Judy, the first ship ever built, which had come back on the great wave, carrying everything they would need in this dark time, including the wonderful salt-pickled beef and the ghost girl, who knows the secrets of the sky and makes wonderful beer —

Daphne blushed at this and tried to catch Mau’s eye, but he looked away.

And Pilu was shouting, “And with the help of the Sweet Judy we shall blow the Raiders across the seas!”

Oh no, she thought, he knows about the cannon! He’s found the Judy’s cannon.

There was cheering as Pilu finished. People surrounded Mau.

There had always been wars, even among the local islands. From what she could work out, they were mostly not much worse than a fight among the stableboys and a good way of getting impressive scars and a story to exaggerate for your grandchildren. And there were often raids from one island to another to steal brides, but since the women arranged it all beforehand, they hardly counted.

But… cannon! She’d seen gun drill on the Judy, and even Cox handled them with care. There was one right way of firing a cannon, and lots of wonderfully explosive ways of getting it wrong.

When the crowd was gathering around Pilu for some patriotic singing, Daphne strode up to Mau and glared at him.

“How many cannon?” she demanded.

“Milo has found five,” said Mau. “We are going to put them on the hill above the beach. Yes, I know what you’re going to say, but the brothers know how to use them.”

“Really? They might have watched! Pilu thinks he knows how to read, but mostly he just guesses!”

“The cannon give us hope. We know who we are now. We are not beggars outside the trouserman world. We are not children. Once we were the bold sailors, all the way to the other end of the world. Perhaps we wore the trousers.”

“Er, I think Pilu might have been going too far with that — ”

“No, he is clever. Should he tell them the truth? Should he tell them that all I’ve got is a few things I know and a handful of guesses and a big hope, and that we are so weak, and that if I am wrong, those of us not dead by sunset on the day the Raiders attack will wish they were? That will only make them fear. If a lie will make us strong, a lie will be my weapon.” He sighed. “People want lies to live by. They cry out for them. Have you looked at the Judy lately? I must show you something.”

The path through the low forest was well worn. So much had been dragged out to the beach in the past months that even high-speed vines and voracious grasses had not been able to keep up everywhere. In places the forest floor was just shards of crumbling stone.

“We go to the Sweet Judy for everything,” said Mau as he led the way. “It gives us wood and food and light. Without the Judy and her cargo, where would we be? What could we want that the Judy could not give us? That’s what people say. And now, since our gods have failed us… ”

He stood back.

Someone had nailed a red fish to the planking of the ship. By the smell, it had been there for several days. And below it were a stick man and a stick woman, drawn very crudely in red, white, and black. Daphne stared at them.

“That’s supposed to be me, isn’t it,” she said, “and that’s you with poor Captain Roberts’s cap on.”

“Yes.” Mau sighed.

“It’s a good one of the cap,” said Daphne diplomatically. “Where did they get the white?”

“There’s a stick of it in the carpenter’s toolbox,” said Mau gloomily.

“Ah, that would be called chalk,” said Daphne. “I suppose all these round things they have drawn here are barrels?”

“Yes. This is a god place now. I’ve heard them talking, sometimes. Some of them think the gods sent the Judy here to help them! Can you believe that? Then who sent the wave? They’ll believe in anything! This morning I heard one of the new ones talking about ‘The Cave the Gods Made’! We made it! Men made the gods, too. Gods of cold stone, which we made so that we could hide from the dark in a shell of comfortable lies. But when the Raiders come, there will be five cannon on the beach, made by men! And when they speak, they will not tell lies!”

“You will blow yourself up! Those cannon have been thrown about and dragged over rocks, and they were old and rusty to start with! Cookie said they’d turn into a tin banana if you fire them with more than half a load. They’ll blow up!”

“We will not run. We cannot run. So we must fight. And if we fight, we must win. But least we know how they will fight.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“Because when the Raiders come, they will pour onto the beach and challenge our chief to single combat.”

“You? But you can’t — ”

“I have more than one plan. Please trust me.”

“You will fire the cannon?”

“Perhaps. They worship Locaha. They think he protects them. They collect skulls for him. They eat the flesh of men in his honor. They believe the more men they kill, the more slaves they will have in his country when he takes them. They don’t care if they die. But Locaha makes no bargains with anyone.”

They were back on the beach now. In the distance, a couple of men were, very slowly, carrying a cannon up the track.

“I don’t think we have much time,” said Mau. “The man with the big bleeding nose will tell Cox that we are an island of invalids and children and no trousermen. Except you.”

“He won’t care who gets killed. He shot a butterfly in half, remember?” said Daphne.

Mau shook his head. “How can he rise up every morning and decide to be him?”

“I think that if you could understand him, you’d be him. That’s what he does. He turns people into creatures like himself. That’s what happened to Foxlip. And he’ll make sure that the only way to kill him is to be worse than him. It nearly worked on poor Captain Roberts. Make sure it doesn’t happen to you, Mau!”

Mau sighed. “Let’s get back before they start worshiping us, shall we?”

They followed the cannon and Daphne trailed behind a little. Even wearing the trousers, which were far too big for him, Mau still walked like a dancer. Daphne had been taken to the ballet several times by her grandmother, who wanted to make sure she grew up to be a proper lady and not marry a godless scientist. She’d been bored silly, and the dancers were nothing like as graceful as she had expected. But Mau walked as if every part of his body knew where it was and where it was going to and exactly how fast it had to go to get there. People would have paid good money just to see the muscles on his back move like they were doing now. She understood the maids back home a lot more when the sun gleamed on his shoulders. Ahem.

In the morning they fired a cannon, an enterprise that consisted of lighting a really long fuse and then everyone running very fast in the opposite direction. The bang was impressive and most people got back on their feet in time to see the splash when the ball hit the water on the other side of the lagoon.

But Daphne didn’t join in the celebrations. Of course, according to Cookie, everything on the Judy was far too old and ready for the scrap heap, but she’d looked into the barrels of the cannon, and they were a mess. Four had cracks in them, and the last one’s inside looked as knobbly as the moon. They did not look like the kind of cannon you wanted to fire if you had been raised in the belief that, when it came to cannon, the ball should come out of the front. But Mau wouldn’t listen to her when she tried to talk to him about it, and a look came over his face that she’d seen before. It said: “I know what I’m doing. Don’t bother me. Everything will be all right.” And in the meantime, down by the fire, Milo and Pilu banged mysteriously at empty tins from the Judy’s galley, hammering them flat for no reason they were prepared to give. Some of the men and older boys were trained in firing the cannon, but since there wasn’t any gunpowder to spare for actually firing any more of the things, they made do with pushing wooden cartridges into the barrel and shouting, “Bang!” They got quite good at that, and were proud at the speed with which “Bang!” could be shouted. Daphne said she hoped the enemy would be trained to say “Aargh!”

Nothing happened and went on happening. They finished the pig fence, which meant that the last of the planting could be done. They started a new hut, but this was a lot higher up the slope. Trees were planted. One of the men got his leg ripped open on the first boar hunt since the wave and Daphne sewed it up again, washing the wound in mother-of-beer to keep it clean. Mau stood guard on the beach every night, often with the Unknown Woman nearby, but now at least she trusted people enough to leave her little boy with them. And that was just as well, because she had taken a sudden interest in papervine, cutting the longest leaves of it from all over the island and then endlessly plaiting them into string after green string. So now, because it’s how people’s minds work, the Unknown Woman was known as the Papervine Woman.

Once she solemnly handed her baby to Daphne, and Cahle made a remark that Daphne didn’t quite catch but which made all the women laugh, so it was almost certainly something like, “It’s about time you made one!”

People relaxed.

And the Raiders came, just at dawn.

They came with drums and torchlight.

Mau ran up the beach to the huts, shouting, “The Raiders are coming! The Raiders are coming!”

People woke up and ran, mostly into one another, while outside the clanging and drumming went on. The dogs barked and got under people’s feet. In ones and twos men hurried up to the cannons on the hill, but by then it was too late.

“You’re all dead,” said Mau.

Out on the lagoon the mists faded. Milo and Pilu stopped their drumming and banging and paddled their canoe back to the beach. People looked around feeling stupid and annoyed. Nevertheless, up on the hill a man shouted “Bang!” at the top of his voice and looked very pleased with himself.

Later, though, Mau asked Daphne what the casualties were.

“Well, one man dropped his spear on his own foot,” she said. “A woman sprained her ankle because she tripped over her dog, and the man up on the cannon got his hand stuck up in the barrel.”

“How can you possibly get your hand stuck up the barrel of a cannon?” said Mau.

“Apparently he was pushing the ball in and it rolled back onto his fingers,” said Daphne. “Perhaps you should write a letter to the cannibals, telling them not to come. I know you don’t know how to write, but they probably don’t know how to read.”

“I must organize people better,” said Mau, sighing.

“No!” said Daphne. “Tell them to organize themselves! There should be lookouts. There should always be a man up on the guns. Tell the women to make sure they know where to go. Oh, and tell them that the fastest gun crew will get extra beer. Make them think. Tell them what’s got to be done, and let them work out how. And now, thank you, I’ve got some beer half made!”

Back in her hut, with the reassuringly homely smells of the cauldron, the beer, and Mrs. Gurgle, she wondered about Cookie: whether he had survived the wave, because if anyone should have done so, it was Cookie.

Daphne had spent a lot of time in the Sweet Judy’s galley, because it was only another type of kitchen, and she was at home in kitchens. It was also a safe place. Even at the height of the mutiny, everyone was friends with Cookie, and he had no enemies. Every seaman, even a madman like Cox, knew that there was no point in upsetting the cook, who had all kinds of little opportunities to get his own back, as you might find out one night when it was you hanging over the rail, trying to throw up your own stomach.

And on top of this Cookie was good company and seemed to have sailed to everywhere on just about any kind of ship, and he was constantly rebuilding his own coffin, which he’d brought aboard. It was now part of the furniture of the galley, and most of the time the saucepans were piled up on top of it. He seemed surprised that Daphne thought all this was a touch on the odd side.

Perhaps this was because the most important thing about this coffin was that Cookie did not intend to die in it. He intended to live in it instead, because he had designed it to float. He had even built a keel on it. He took great pleasure in showing her how well appointed it was inside. There was a shroud, in case he actually did die, but which could easily be used as a sail until that unlucky day; there was a small folding mast for this very purpose. Inside the coffin, which was padded, there were rows of pockets that held ship’s biscuits, dried fruit, fishhooks (and fishing line), a compass, charts, and a wonderful device for distilling drinking water from the sea. It was a tiny floating world.

“I got the idea off a harpooner I met when I was working on the whalers,” he told her one day as he was adding yet another pocket to the insides of the coffin. “He was a rum ’un and no mistake. Had more tattoos than the Edinburgh Festival and all his teeth filed as sharp as daggers, but he lugged this coffin onto every ship he sailed with so’s if he died, he’d have a proper Christian funeral and not be chucked over the side sewn up in a bit o’ canvas with a cannonball for company. I thought about it myself — it’s a good basic idea, but it needs a little bit of changing. Anyway, I didn’t stay long on that ship on account of coming down with bowel weevils just before we rounded the cape, and I had to put ashore at Valparaiso. It was probably a blessing in disguise, ’cause I reckon that ship was heading for a bad end. I’ve seen a few mad captains in my time, but that one was as crazy as a spoon. And you may depend upon it, when the captain is crazy, so is the ship. I often wonder what happened to ’em all.”

Daphne finished making the mother-of-beer and walked down the slope until she could see the little crumbling cliff that overlooked the beach. Mau was there, and so were all the gunners, including the Papervine Woman, for some reason.

The cannon are useless, she thought. He must know that. So what does he think he’s doing?

There was a distant shout of “Bang!” and she sighed….

Two of the Gentlemen of Last Resort ran up onto the deck and joined the captain at the ship’s rail.

“What is the emergency?” said Mr. Black. “Surely we’re nowhere near the Mothering Sundays yet?”

“The lookout said he saw a maroon fired,” said the captain, his telescope to his eye. “Some poor soul’s been shipwrecked, I daresay. There’s an island there. It’s not on the charts. Technically, Mr. Black, I need your permission to change course.”

“Of course you must, aha, change course, Captain,” said Mr. Black. “Indeed, I note that you already have.”

“That is correct, sir,” said the captain carefully. “The sea has its own laws.”

“Well done, Captain. I should listen to your advice.” There was a moment’s silence, caused by nobody mentioning the king’s daughter.

“I’m sure Roberts got her through, sir,” said the captain, looking carefully at the distant island again.

“It’s kind of you to say so.”

“In the meantime,” the captain went on cheerfully, “I do believe I am looking at a very lucky shipwrecked mariner. Someone else may have discovered an island over there before us. I can see a fire, and a man fishing from a — ” He stopped, and adjusted the telescope. “Well, I have to say he seems to be sitting in a coffin….”

There was no alarm the next day, but there was one the day after, which Mau said went well. Every morning, people became better and better at shouting “Bang!” And every day Daphne wondered what Mau was really planning.